Our “Why” of FI: Long-Term Slow Travel
Picture this: It’s 2019, and Ryan and I are enjoying a weekend away in the beautiful mountain town of Marshall, NC. Even though our Airbnb is located up a pretty wild mountain road, passing by a slew of super racist flags posted on a barn along the way, the views from the top are beautiful. It should be a fairly idyllic, romantic weekend away, right?
Erm… not so much. In 2024 (a full five years away) Ryan’s daughter is due to graduate from high school and head off to college- leaving us empty nesters. As is my way, I’m in full planning mode about all the glorious things we will be able to do at that time.
Ryan could take a sabbatical! We could take a year off to travel the world! We’ll sell everything and live minimally… it’ll be great!
Except Ryan didn’t feel that way. He knew that in 2024, he’d be just a year and a half from being able to start taking a pension from the company where he’d been working for over 20 years. Leaving to enjoy a year away right before that was set to happen made no sense.
You can see the conflict, right? I wanted to dream of a year gallivanting around the world, Ryan wanted to ensure our future financial stability. As we’ve said many times since, we didn’t yet have the common language of financial independence.
It wasn’t too long after this fated trip that I learned about the FIRE movement for the first time, and we finally had a way to merge my travel dreams with our financial reality… and to take steps from there that moved us in that direction. This common language has been a huge gift, and we’ve continued to learn so much about personal finance since then.
Now we are just 11 months from Ryan being able to take his pension. We don’t yet know exactly when we’ll pull the plug on full time employment, but we do know what we’ll be doing after we do!
So here’s the plan: long term, slow travel.
Here’s a rough timeline:
Retire (and party!) sometime in the summer of 2026
Sell most of our possessions, including Ryan’s car. (We no longer own real estate, preferring to rent due to cost of living).
Move our irreplaceable/prized possessions to my parents’ house in TN and establish residency there. (No state income tax!)
Start our long term, slow travel journey in the US & Canada, focusing on national parks, natural areas and ski locations.
Visit friends and family along the way, and welcome them to visit us whenever/wherever they’d like!
So that’s the plan. There could always be deviations, because who knows what will happen in the next 12 to 18 months. But it’s fun to look back on where these conversations started- overlooking the mountains and figuring out a plan that works for both of us.